>As a new sub to the list I am enquiring if any one has knowledge of Robbie
>Burns descendants. Popular family history states that my grandmother Helen
>Whitecross Gray (daughter of Charles Gray (baker) and Elizabeth Burns - who
>married in Duddingston on 15 Dec 1874) was a direct line descendant of
>Robbie Burns.
>
>I am very interested in finding out if this is true. Can anyone out there
>help me?

Barbara,

There is no record of an Elizabeth Burns married to Charles Gray in a chart I
have - The Ancestors, Descendants and Collateral Relatives of Robert Burns
compiled by Robert Duthie at Stonehaven, Kincardine 25 january 1859.

Robert Burns had four legitimate sons by his marriage to Jean Armour: Robert
Burns, who who worked in the Stamp Office in London, married a widow and died
in Dumfries without issue; Francis Wallace Burns who died young in 1803; William
Nicol Burns, a Colonel in the Indian Army, who married but died without issue;
and James Glencairn Burns, also in the Indian Army, who marrried twice (first
with two sons and a daughter, of whom only the daughter Sarah Burns survived to
adulthood); second producing a daughter Sarah becket Burns). Thus there were no
grandsons of the bard surviving to pass on the Burns name.